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One response to “So what do you think?”

Don Caulley

November 21, 2011 at 4:24 pm

Tim – My thoughts are that people have seen Aids as a direct result of the sin of that individual, whether it be through homosexual contact or promiscuous heterosexual behavior. While both of these things are sinful behavior, the church’s job to love others is not based on that person worthiness of being loved, rather it is based on that person’s innate value to God. On top of this is the fear associated with the disease, that it is basically a death sentence if you get it, has kept many Christians from showing love as they should. After all, most people deserve this disease right? Also confessing that you had this disease effectively rendered that person a leper. Leprosy was seen as a just reward for an unclean lifestyle therefore the disease merited isolation for spiritual and contagious issues as well. The church has largely ignored the way Jesus treated lepers. He touched them (Mark 1:41). Pretty amazing for Jesus to touch someone that was so thoroughly unclean. Thus even with the sinner Jesus ministered, so to should his church, if we are indeed his church.

We both know that many people get Aids through completely innocent means, blood transfusions, birth, and the rest. The stigma still remains however. It is as if Christians have taken the issue of Aids and used it to show that indeed these people are cursed by God. The problem with the church is not that they do not take care of people with Aids, it is that they do not really love and follow after God. If they did then taking care of these people would not be a theological issue, but an issue of the heart. Our coldness to people suffering with this disease revels more about the church, than it does about the people with Aids.

Wherever a church does not reach where Jesus would reach, that church ceases to be of God and becomes something more like a society of like minded people who want to try to do good when it is convenient.